


Beautiful Agony (This Too Shall Pass)

by devilinthedetails



Category: PIERCE Tamora - Works, Tortall - Tamora Pierce
Genre: Beauty - Freeform, Family, Gen, Grief, Pain, references to death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-06
Updated: 2020-04-06
Packaged: 2021-03-02 04:06:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 402
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23518909
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/devilinthedetails/pseuds/devilinthedetails
Summary: Gareth and Lianne face the fleeting pain and pleasure of life.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 6





	Beautiful Agony (This Too Shall Pass)

**Author's Note:**

> Haven't written much in the Tamora Pierce genre in awhile so trying to find my mojo again with something short. Written for th Malorie's Peak Prompt "This Too Shall Pass" over at Goldenlake.

Beautiful Agony (This Too Shall Pass) 

“This too shall pass,” rasped Lianne, her voice so faint that Gareth had to lean over her bed to hear her words. Her words that echoed the ones he had whispered in her ear so many years ago when she, a delicate six-year-old who bruised and bled at the drop of a pin, had sought him out for a big brother’s comfort skinning a knee. 

“This illness?” Gareth squeezed his sister’s hand gently, rattled by how feeble her bones felt beneath his. 

“This illness.” Lianne released a labored breath—her chest sinking and taking a long time by Gareth’s heartbeat to rise again. Her eyes drifted shut and then fluttered open again. “This agony. This life.” 

“This life hasn’t been all agony, has it? Some parts of it have been beautiful?” Beautiful. That was how Gareth remembered his little sister looking when she dashed through the flowering fields of Naxen, sunbeams shining in her loose brown hair, as she picked up blue-blossoms to braid into it. That was how her remembered the music of her laughter as she dipped her toes into the sun-dappled shores of Lake Naxen to discover whether the water was warm enough for wading. That was how he remembered her when her dress belled around her as she made her debut at court. That was how he remembered her smile, radiant as the pearl necklace that gleamed around her throat, on her wedding day. 

“Yes, some parts of it have been beautiful, dear brother.” Lianne’s lips tilted upward into what Gareth suspected was a weak attempt at a smile made more for his solace than for hers. “A beautiful agony.” 

A beautiful agony. Gareth thought that a heart-wrenchingly perfect way of how Lianne had looked with tears of joy and pain mingling on her face as she clutched Jon to her breast after a birth the healers reported she had cried and bled through—the healers had thought she might succumb to death giving birth or shortly thereafter, but she had found the strength to survive—perhaps for her newborn son and her husband. 

Lianne must also have been thinking of Jon who now waited just outside her door, offering them privacy, “Will you call in my son?”

“Of course.” Gareth pressed a kiss across his sister’s disturbingly cold forehead before rising and crossing the room to beckon Jon into the bedchamber.


End file.
